Under pressure from activists and state environmental authorities, Freepoint Eco-Systems has suspended operations at its new plastics pyrolysis plant in Hebron, Ohio.
The Hebron plant is one of the largest of its kind in the US. It has the capacity to break down 80,000 metric tons (t) of plastics waste per year into pyrolysis oil, a hydrocarbon liquid that that refineries and chemical plants can process back into new plastics. In April 2025, the firm announced that its first shipment of pyrolysis oil had been delivered to Shell’s refining and chemical complex in Norco, Louisiana.
The Hebron plant has been the target of local activists and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
For example, one of the groups campaigning against the plant, Moms Clean Air Force, posted a video early last year of smoke rising from the facility. “I felt a wave of intense nausea, plus a headache and dizziness,” the photographer who recorded the video said.
In December, the Ohio EPA sent Freepoint a notice of violation. Among its findings were visible particulate emissions, which the agency attributed to “malfunctions associated with the operation of the sponge oil absorber.” The state EPA demanded a compliance plan within 30 days and reminded the company that such malfunctions need to be reported immediately.
Additionally, the Ohio EPA found that Freepoint was not using a scrubber to control hydrochloric acid (HCl) emissions. “Instead, they have determined that the water in their liquid ring compressor system is absorbing HCl from the process gas,” the agency’s notice says.
An emailed statement to C&EN from a Freepoint Eco-Systems spokesperson leaves unclear whether the company intends to remedy the problems and restart the plant or shut it permanently. “The site is undergoing a controlled transition to a care-and-maintenance state while strategic options for the facility are evaluated,” the statement says. “Our priorities throughout this process are safety, environmental stewardship, regulatory compliance, and support for affected employees and contractors.
Freepoint is planning to build another plant, in Eloy, Arizona, which it unveiled back in 2023; the polymer maker Dow signed an agreement with the company to buy up to 65,000 t per year of pyrolysis oil from that facility. When asked by C&EN, the spokesperson didn’t disclose the status of the Arizona plant.
The closure of the Ohio facility is just the latest setback for pyrolysis, which has been promoted by the plastics industry as a panacea for handling mixed plastics waste that can’t feasibly be recycled mechanically. Braven Environmental recently abandoned a deal to buy land in Texarkana, Texas, for a new pyrolysis plant, according to local reports. In 2025, Braven signed an agreement to sell pyrolysis oil from the plant to BASF.
Last year, Alterra Energy, which operates a pyrolysis plant in Akron, Ohio, pulled out of a plan to build a second facility, in Sugarloaf, Pennsylvania. The company blamed negotiations over its lease, but the plant also faced opposition from environmental groups.
One group opposing pyrolysis plants says the recent project failures demonstrate that the technology isn’t a solution to the crisis of plastics waste. “The gap between industry rhetoric and operational reality here is wider than the Grand Canyon,” Rita O’Connell, national plastics organizer for Beyond Plastics, says in a statement. “Chemical recycling has never worked in the past, it’s not working now, and there’s no evidence it’s going to work in the future.”
Plastics pyrolysis appears to be going more smoothly for some firms. For example, ExxonMobil started up its first pyrolysis plant at its complex in Baytown, Texas, in 2022. The company subsequently installed two more lines at the site and can now process 110,000 t per year.
